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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23856640">Little Green Stones</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fuzziestpuppy/pseuds/Fuzziestpuppy'>Fuzziestpuppy</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bad at communicating, But they're doing their best, Established Relationship, Fluff, Gift Giving, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 21:48:51</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,562</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23856640</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fuzziestpuppy/pseuds/Fuzziestpuppy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Pagan's always giving Ajay gifts that he doesn't want.  Pagan doesn't seem to particularly care that he doesn't want them.</p><p>But it's all a matter of perspective.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ajay Ghale/Pagan Min</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>81</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Little Green Stones</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>***</p><p> </p><p>Ajay eyes the little package sitting innocuously on the dresser with trepidation, yet another of Pagan’s many presents deposited here for him to find.</p><p>As always, this one is also wrapped in Pagan’s signature paper, an eye-watering shade of Pepto pink smattered with little red hearts. He eyes it like it’s a grenade. Actually, he’d rather it was a grenade. Grenades are useful, but Pagan never gets him <em>useful</em> things. His own stupid heart still holds out hope that one day, he might give him a gift that turns out to be something he would actually like to have.</p><p>But that day, if it ever comes at all, isn’t going to be this one. Just a feeling. And his instincts prove dismayingly correct when he tears the paper off the box to reveal yet another Rolex.  This one in platinum, with tiny green emeralds around the face.</p><p>It’s the third one Pagan’s given him, and he seriously wants to chuck it out the window even as he tries to school his face into something conveying appreciation.</p><p>“You don’t like it,” Pagan says from the other end of the bedroom, spotting the ruse immediately. But then again, a little kid could probably do the same. It’s not fair that he’s such a shitty liar, just godawful at it.</p><p>“I mean, it’s…nice,” which is the first thing that comes to mind that’s not blatantly offensive. It’s still lame as fuck though. Of course it’s nice, it’s a fucking ten thousand dollar watch. It could also feed the average Kyrati village for roughly a year.</p><p>“Oh, don’t you worry about it, darling!” Pagan switches it to bright and cheery with whiplash speed, but unfortunately, he knows that precise tone. It’s pretty specific; the one he tends to fall back on when he’s gotten his feelings pricked at and is pissed at himself for it. Never a good combo. “I’ll get you another one, just to your liking! We can get online and order it and…”</p><p>“God, Pagan, I…no. The watch is great. Thank you,” he forces himself to say. Has he even noticed that he’s never worn the other two that sit in their closet, still in the boxes? That he’s really <em>not</em> the kind of guy to be strolling around in one, or in one of the twenty-something bespoke suits that Pagan’s gotten him, or the diamond cuff links that also sit with those watches, unworn. Never even tried them on.</p><p>“Hmm…I really did think you’d love it though, since you like green,” Pagan says, but dubiously, as if he’s unsure if this is actually the case.</p><p>“Yeah. Green’s good.” He looks down at his socked feet and wishes he’d just drop it already.</p><p>Pagan gusts an irritated sigh at him, like Ajay’s being completely unreasonable about trying not to hurt his goddamn feelings. “Boy, I wish you’d tell me what the hell’s the matter, instead of just standing there and staring at the fucking floor.”</p><p>“Not like you actually want to know, or care,” he snaps right back, temper pricked at. He’s usually cooler than this, more patient with Pagan’s bullshit, but that idea suddenly hurts, sharp and hot and right through his guard. The idea that Pagan might not even care enough to notice.</p><p>“Oh <em>please,</em> spare me the melodrama,” waving a dismissive hand, and that nearly makes him turn on his heel and walk the fuck out right then.</p><p>“Yeah,” he says, swallowing everything down as best he can and willing himself quiet inside. “That’s about what I thought you’d say.” Still and quiet, like still water. It takes a substantial effort. Especially when he looks down at the box still in his hand, suddenly hating it. But he makes himself walk over and put it down gently on the shelf beside the other two. “Listen, I’m just…going to go out for a while, okay? I’ll probably be back in time for dinner.”</p><p>This is another blatant lie; the current plan is to be gone well past any reasonable expectation of dinnertime. Out into the hills, until he’s fairly certain that Pagan’s gone to bed or is morosely drunk out on the balcony. Either way, he won’t have to look at him. Like a coward. He straightens the leather boxes into a neat line in an attempt to distract himself.</p><p>Fingers brush the back of his hand; a tentative, feather-soft touch.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Pagan whispers. “That was a ridiculous thing for me to say to you. Terribly insensitive.”</p><p>“Yeah, it was,” Ajay admits. “But…it’s okay. You always get a little pissy when you get your feelings hurt.”</p><p>Pagan sputters in indignation, as if he means to argue the point. But then seems to think better of it, and subsides. “Fair enough.”</p><p>“I didn’t mean to sound like a fucking ingrate.”</p><p>“I know you didn’t. But it’s also abundantly clear that I’ve fucked up somehow. Can you perhaps explain it to me?”</p><p>Ajay sucks in a breath and lets it out slowly, trying to put it into words. Never his strong suit.</p><p>“I don’t know why you want me all…all decked out in this pricey shit,” he mutters. “You keep buying it and I keep not wearing it and then feel guilty for not wearing it, but you don’t seem to give a fuck. Or even notice, or…I don’t know. I don’t get it. Maybe you don’t even care how I feel about it. Maybe you just want me in this stuff so you can parade me around, so I can be the King’s arm candy or whatever.” He tries to keep the bitterness out of his voice, but doesn’t do a good job of that either.</p><p>Pagan just looks at him, a little furrow between his eyebrows. “Ajay…”</p><p>“I was hoping that maybe this was the time that you’d gotten me a real present,” Ajay whispers. “Like a thing that actually meant something to you, like maybe you saw it and it reminded you of me, or…I don’t know.” He sighs. “Sorry, that’s stupid.”</p><p>“No, no, it isn’t.”</p><p>Surprisingly, Pagan reaches for the box at the center of the controversy and opens it. He takes Ajay’s hand in his and unbuckles his cheap, beat-to-shit Timex with gentle fingers and slides it off, taking out the new watch before tucking his old one back in the box, like it needs to be kept safe too. Undoes the clasp of the Rolex and carefully draws it onto his wrist.</p><p>Pagan has such elegant hands. Strong, and graceful, and he runs his long fingers along the underside of his forearm in an almost reverent way as he slips the hated watch on him. But he stands there and lets Pagan do it, soothed and a little entranced by the slow deliberateness of his movements. It’s possible that he was wrong, about it having no meaning.</p><p>Ajay loves him, he does. More than anything.</p><p>When Pagan closes the clasp, the band fits his wrist perfectly. To the millimeter. Did he somehow measure it while he was asleep? The thought of him carefully looping a measuring tape around his wrist in the middle of the night just so he could get it made to fit him exactly makes his heart twinge a little, makes him regret never even trying the others on.</p><p>“I like to give you fine, expensive things because you’re worthy of them,” Pagan murmurs, turning his wrist to the light and making the tiny stones sparkle. “Comfortable clothes in the softest fabrics, made just for you. Shoes that fit your feet perfectly. Things like this.” He runs the tip of his finger softly around the bezel. “Only a bauble, true, but one that will last, and always keep the right time. One that will never fail you. Something that you can keep and look at and perhaps remember me fondly by, after I’m gone.”</p><p>“Pagan…”</p><p>“You have no idea how amazing you are,” Pagan says, cutting him off, his voice suddenly rough with emotion. “You’re worthy of the very best of everything…but I don’t think you know that. I don’t think you can see it for yourself quite yet. So I think perhaps I keep giving you things like this in the hope that someday, you can see yourself the way that I see you.” Pagan brushes his other hand down his cheek, but a little hesitantly, like he’s afraid that Ajay might flinch away from his touch. “Anything you’d like for a gift, I’ll get it for you. Anything you want, darling,” with so much intensity, “anything at all. I only wish to please you.”</p><p>Unwilling to look him in the eye, he touches the little emerald stones around the inside edge of the watch as well, their fingers almost brushing. Pagan’s wish, his hope for the future, a keepsake to remember him by. Little green stones, as vibrantly green as Kyrat’s lush forests, because he knows he likes that color.</p><p>Ajay pulls away from him and Pagan’s face falls.</p><p>Just for a moment, before he schools it into something bland in self-defense. Obviously not understanding…until Ajay reaches out and undoes the single button of his suit jacket, until he slides his arms under it and around his waist to hold him tight. Pagan would usually bitch about his fucking shirt getting wrinkled, but now he doesn’t say a word. His breaths rise and fall steadily under Ajay’s hands, slow and comforting. He noses his way under Pagan’s collar and breathes him in.</p><p>“Don’t talk about not being around. I don’t want to hear that shit.” It comes out sounding much harsher than he means it to.</p><p>There’s already so much they don’t talk about though. So many tangled knots and old wounds that neither of them knows how to touch. Like the bitterly cold truth that if Mom hadn’t died, if his father hadn’t murdered the baby…they wouldn’t be together now. If they had lived, it would have separated them in all the ways that matter. And what do you even say, in the face of that?</p><p>But Pagan takes his sharp tone in stride, and understands.</p><p>“Forgive me…there’s been all too much of that sort of thing, hasn’t there? I’ll not bring it up again,” he assures him, all low and husky and sweet, and Ajay loves him so much in that moment. So much that it aches…and like usual, he has no idea how to tell him. Not just to say, ‘I love you,’ which of course, he’s said to him before. Any dumbass could say that. But just like he can’t see himself the way that Pagan sees him, he can’t make Pagan really understand, can never find the right thing to say so that Pagan <em>feels</em> it along with him. That sensation of being about to brim over, terrifying and elating at once.</p><p>He’s always been so shitty with words. Whenever he gets upset, they tend to lock up in his throat, choking him. Or just fucking evaporate, and he sighs in frustration even as he burrows in deeper. Like a coward, he hides his face in Pagan’s shirtfront until there’s only darkness. Until there’s nothing but him, surrounded by his warmth and his Pagan smell of fresh laundry and the jasmine and sandalwood soap he likes, his pricey aftershave and a hint of tobacco from sneaking a cigarette out on the balcony when he thought Ajay wasn’t looking. His warm skin under it all, and that’s often enough to get him going, get him flushed and turned-on and wanting him, just his smell alone.</p><p>As layered and complicated as Pagan himself.</p><p>“Ajay,” Pagan murmurs, a rumble under his cheek. “Ajay,” low and gentle and warm. One of his big hands touches down on the back of his head, his fingers working into his hair.</p><p>As the minutes pass, Ajay fully expects him to get tired of this and protest with something along the lines of <em>Dear boy, just what <strong>is</strong> it that we’re doing here, hmm?</em> All bored and pretentious as fuck about it. But Pagan doesn’t, maybe realizing that questions won’t lead to answers, not right now. He doesn’t ask, at any rate, just stands there with him in unusually stolid patience and holds him close in the middle of the closet, close and quiet.</p><p>Doing his best to be what he needs.</p><p>They both do. They both try to be what the other one needs. With varying degrees of success, but they always try. Can’t ask anybody for more than that, and he finds himself relaxing further against him. Calm and quiet together, his earlier thoughts of taking off into the woods all forgotten.</p><p>As Ajay holds onto him with his face still nestled in Pagan’s shirt, it occurs to him that it’s stupid to worry about that stuff they don’t talk about. Mom. The past, any of it. In a way, it has almost no bearing on their present. There’s many who would say that just being alive, let alone finding happiness, is a gift that neither of them deserve. Not with so much blood on their collective hands. But that idea of who deserves what doesn’t mean fuckall, especially when so much in life seems to come down to pure chance. Shit just happened the way it happened, and nobody can go back and change a damn thing even if they wanted to, not for any amount of invested guilt or grief or regret.</p><p>There’s nothing in the past for either of them. Nothing back there but old wounds, and the only way they can scab over and scar up and start to fade is to go forward.</p><p>Suddenly, Ajay knows what he wants to tell him. It pops right into his head, just like that…wells up out of his chest, straight from his heart and into his mouth.</p><p>“You’re my gift,” Ajay murmurs into Pagan’s throat, against his beating pulse. Murmurs it into his skin, so he can feel the words as well. “You give me yourself, and that’s all I want. Just you.”</p><p>As long as that stays as true as his new watch, the rest of it might just fall into place, he thinks. Because it isn’t just Pagan’s hopes and wishes for a future together, it’s something they share. He never realized that, until now. The Rolex is an unaccustomed weight on his wrist, like the weight of Pagan in his heart, new enough to be a little strange still. But solid and sturdy, a <em>good</em> weight. One that fits him just right. One that he’s pretty sure won’t fail him either.</p><p>A slow smile spreads across Pagan’s face at his words. While Ajay can’t see it at first, he can feel it against the top of his head. And then gets to see it from himself when Pagan tips up his chin…a real smile for him, one that lights up his face with a sweet little crinkling of his eyes.</p><p>Maybe, just maybe, he managed to get it right this time, Pagan able to hear what he tries so hard to say. Maybe he can hear Pagan a little better too.</p><p>Ajay’s own eyes slide closed when Pagan touches his mouth to his, gentle and unhurried. Soft, and easy, and warm.</p><p> </p><p>End</p><p><br/>
***</p>
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